With the proliferation of low cost microprocessors, memory and image capture electronics, digital cameras are gaining in popularity and are becoming more and more widely available to a larger number of consumers. One of the advantages that a digital camera enjoys over a conventional film camera is that when a digital camera captures an image, the image is stored electronically in a memory element associated with the camera and is available for further electronic manipulation. For example, it is common to capture an image using a digital camera and then print the captured image. The image can be printed by a printer coupled directly to the digital camera (referred to as appliance mode because no computing device is required between the digital camera and printer). Alternatively, the electronic file that contains the captured image can be transferred to a different processing device for printing. Such a transfer may occur by coupling the digital camera to a computer, such as, for example, a personal computer, or may occur by saving the captured image on a removable memory device and transferring the removable media to another processing device.
Digital cameras typically use a light sensor as an image capture element. For example, a charge coupled device (CCD) array or an array of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensors can be used to capture light entering the lens of the digital camera. The elements that form the CCD array or the CMOS array each correspond to one picture element (pixel) A typical image sensor includes an array of, for example, 1600×1200 pixels. Such an array of pixels is arranged in an aspect ratio of 4:3 The aspect ratio refers to the proportion between the length and width of an object, such as an image sensor, and, as used below, refers to the proportion between the length and width of an image sensor and a printed image. Other pixel array arrangements are possible, but the 4:3 array is typical, and therefore, will be used for explanation purposes.
As mentioned above, one of the electronic manipulations typically performed on a captured digital image is to print the image. Unfortunately, typical print sizes, such as, for example, but not limited to, 4″×6,″ 5″×7″ and 8″×10″ do not correspond to the 4:3 aspect ratio of the image sensor found on a typical digital camera. The 4″×6″ print size is a 2:3 aspect ratio, the 5″×7″ print size is a 2.5:3.5 aspect ratio and the 8″×10″ is a 4:5 aspect ratio. Furthermore, different regions in the world will have different standard print sizes having different aspect ratios from those described above. To compensate for this aspect ratio difference between the image sensor and the print size, the printer can automatically edit (typically referred to as “cropping’) the electronic image to fit the desired print size. Unfortunately, this prevents the user of the digital camera, particularly when the digital camera is used in appliance mode, from choosing the portions of the captured image that will be cropped
Therefore, there is a need in the industry for a way of allowing the user of a digital camera to determine the print area of an image that is captured using a digital camera that has an image sensor having a particular aspect ratio and that is printed using a print size that has an aspect ratio different from the aspect ratio of the image sensor.